


Stay With Me Forever

by GloriaMundi



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: C17, Drabble Collection, Historical, Other, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-20
Updated: 2004-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's dreamt of her from time to time, but lately she's filled his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay With Me Forever

Her gilded figurehead has a name, though none now know it. She slew her first captain when he grew old and would sail no more. She's hard as iron, black with age and blood. That siren smile has lured many to their deaths, though other men have found wealth untold in her service.

The seas she sails are not always those tame charted oceans with their pretty mermaids and compass roses. She has carried kings to unsung victories, and borne walking corpses back to the lands of the living. She loves, and hates, and is as fickle as any mortal.

\- - -

Jack Sparrow hears her speaking, but mostly the words are in a tongue he doesn't know. They sound so clearly, though. He learns them off by heart and parrots them to chance-met strangers on foreign quays. There was an old woman in Piraeus who understood his words, he'd swear to it: she cursed him, furious and afraid, before she fled into the marketplace.

Some nights, when Jack's alone on deck, he hears clear phrases in the murmur and grind of ancient oak. "Uncharted oceans," she says to him. "Sail the seas and bring back gold." And, "Stay with me forever."

\- - -

He's dreamt of her from time to time, but lately she's filled his dreams. He's woken up hard, thinking of her remote smile, and brought himself off -- hand working frantically, neither as smooth nor as cool as hers must feel -- with her name on his lips. He forgets it as he comes, hot and sticky in the dark cabin. By the time he's cleaned himself and turned over to bury his head in the worn blankets, he's forgotten the dream too: all but the impulse to lay his still-sticky hand upon the oaken bulkhead, like a caress, like a tribute.

\- - -

Docked at Tortuga, he's as keen as his crew to get ashore and into the taverns and brothels. Gibbs makes a lewd comment: Anamaria glares at them both.

It's been a while since Jack's been with anyone, and longer since he chose a woman. Yet, as the boats pull away from the _Pearl_, he looks back as though someone has called his name.

Is it the strange flat sunset light on the water that makes those fathomless eyes fix upon him? Has that carved smile thinned cruelly?

By midnight he's cursing the rum. Never her. But it's shaming to fail.

\- - -

It wasn't as though he hadn't wanted a woman. Wasn't as though the rum usually took him that way. Quite the opposite, in fact, and there were plenty who'd tell you so. Maybe he'd spoilt himself with fine things: maybe he was falling sick.

None of the rest of them knew what had happened --- or _not_ happened --- upstairs, but Jack found himself glaring at any man who looked at him askance. That was a sure way to get trouble for free in Tortuga: best to take himself back to the _Pearl_, to dose his foul temper with rum and sleep.

\- - -

Back on the water, with the shingle beach loud in his ears, the rum and the land and the humiliation fall away from him like fog lifting. He can feel last night's dream ghosting at the edges of his thoughts, but it won't come clear.

The new oars leave splinters in his hands, and he curses mildly as he rows.

She had touched him gently, in the dream, and her hands had been cold and dark and smooth like water under the lee of a ship. Her face, so familiar...

Sculling, he glances over his shoulder, and into her eyes.

\- - -

Last night he'd felt like a boy with his first lover: with his first woman, because there had been that mystery to her. He'd been afraid of her.

Now, staring at her face as the small boat rocks beneath him, he's afraid again, because he can see her looking back at him.

Of course he'd dreamt of her, year after year, all those years when they were parted. She was the only one who had never wanted him to change. She had never been taken from him, for he'd never owned her. He just loved her desperately, hopelessly, without reason.

\- - -

She's looking back at Jack, and he pretends the smile is for him. He pretends she's brought him back to be her own: that she won't share him with the tavern girls, with their red lips and soft bodies. Where could _they_ take him? Her scorn is palpable, and he's a little afraid. Only a little.

When he climbs aboard the wood beneath his hands feels alive. The _Black Pearl_ rocks a little, like a welcome. He thinks of climbing out along the bowsprit, draping himself there as close to the figurehead-face as he can get: but she is everywhere.

\- - -

Barbossa had made her show her true self: something outside nature, something old and grim and dark. She'd have slain him if she could, but he was quick and canny and he'd known how to claim her.

Now Jack's here again, and he's made good every hull-hole, every rotting timber and fouled line and stinking bilge. New sails, new cables, clean and tight, coppered and pitched. Restored to her former glory, she does not easily forget that she was misused.

She half-remembers the mutiny, as she half-remembers everything. It won't happen again. She won't permit it. Jack will be safe.

\- - -

Cradled in his cabin she's all around him, encompassing him, so close that he can hardly breathe. There's no point lighting a lantern, for he can see her better with his eyes closed. He wishes for more rum, but he's afraid of what he might promise her then, drunken in the dark. She's never spoken to him -- "stay with me forever" -- so clearly and lovingly.

"Tell me what you want," he murmurs into the blackness.

"Never leave me."

And, remembering the moment he threw the coin back, Jack realises that some day they will go down, together, to the depths.

-end-


End file.
